


The Viper's Pit

by necroMatador



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Gen, Mild Blood, Mild Gore, acid breath is nothing to mess around with guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:34:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27786826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/necroMatador/pseuds/necroMatador
Summary: It was elven assassin Fer de Lance's first actual job, but turns out the bandits he was after had already been viciously defeated by a mysterious copper dragonborn.
Kudos: 1





	The Viper's Pit

There was a group of bandits hanging out at a nearby abandoned farmstead, making life hard for any merchants or pilgrims attempting to come up the road to Guildmount. Fer de Lance had been paid to make the bandits disappear. That’s all the wood elf assassin knew, and that’s what he prepared for. It was his first official job, and the first official mission given to him as representative of what he eventually hoped to make into a proper assassin’s guild. He took days of careful preparation: learning the land around the ruined farm; assembling the best weapons he could; making sure his arrows were carefully poisoned, his knives were sharp; and building a collection of the traps he planned to set around the bandit hideout just in case. 

The night Lance finally chose to make his move was cloudy, so he would definitely not be seen as he slipped across the untilled fields in the darkness. But as he drew nearer to the farmhouse, the main hub of the bandits he had observed, he could tell something was off. The fire was still lit, that was visible through the broken out windows, but there were no sounds from inside; no snoring or laughing, no sounds of eating or drinking, no talking, nothing. There was an odd, horrible smell hanging heavy in the air that Lance couldn’t quite place. Cautiously and in as complete of silence as possible, he crept into the building. The moment Lance made it to the main room of the building, he could see what was wrong.

The bandits were dead, torn apart and scattered around their still-burning campfire in the stone hearth. A thick coating of blood made the floor sticky, and the red mixed with an odd greenish liquid that seemed to be smoking noxiously in the air. Chemical burns dotted the wood around the room, and several bodies showed the same markings. Sitting silently in the center of the room, splattered with blood, was a copper dragonborn. His face was a mask of some terrible fury, eyes unfocused and acid-dripping mouth in a sharp frown, but he sat stock still and proper with his back straight and hands resting neatly on his lap. A dripping splatter of blood covered most of his mouth and nose.

“Excuse me?” Lance began hesitantly, slowly making his way into the room with an arrow nocked and aimed right at the reptilian creature. The dragonborn didn’t move.

“Did you kill all these men?” Lance tried again. A muscle under one of the dragonborn’s eyes twitched, but nothing else.

“Well whoever did saved me a lot of time and effort.” He let the bow slack and took a surprisingly jovial seat beside the stock-still dragonborn. “Somebody paid me good money to have them killed. I’d be willing to split it with you…”

Still nothing. Undeterred, Lance extended a hand.

“The name’s Fer de Lance. Like the snake. You can call me Lance though.” Still no reaction, but Lance calmly moved his hand into the dragonborn’s unfocused line of sight. Slowly, clouded eyes sharpened and came back into focus on the wood elf’s hand. Slower still, the slit pupils travelled up the arm attached to the intruding hand and eventually found their way around to meet Lance’s mismatched eyes. The fury in the dragonborn’s acid-green stare almost made Lance recoil, but the wood elf had never exactly been good at reacting normally to things.

The dragonborn’s mouth opened slightly, a rush of acidic fumes and the stench of blood escaping between sharp, crooked teeth.

“Kraithas.” His voice was rough and cracked like he had been screaming at the top of his lungs for hours. “My name is Kraithas.” Lance’s grin nearly eclipsed his face.


End file.
